by Lee Taylor
Mike says, “You said you quit for good.”
I take a long drag and tell him, “I lied,” then slowly let the smoke out of my lungs. “God, that’s good.”
He stares at me for a moment. I know he’s going to give me a lecture. I can hear his little brain churning.
I take another drag.
“I know what you’re going through, trying to quit. I know about addiction. With me, it’s milk. I’ve been trying to cut down for years, but I can’t seem to kick the habit. Don’t know why. It’s just something I can’t stop doing. Sometimes I’ll drink an entire quart in one sitting.”
I stare back at him. No expression. Trying to gain composure. I want to laugh out loud, but I know the guy is serious. He actually believes that his drinking a glass of milk is somehow equal to a nicotine rush.
Mike grew up in Minnesota in one of those small Beaver Cleaver towns. He missed the radical part of the sixties and lived out the seventies on some other planet. He never did drugs and only drinks an occasional wine because “it’s good for you.” Mike studied acting at the Goodman Theater in Chicago because it gave him friends. He was geeky looking and in theater geeky is an asset. In between stage plays, Mike took up driving me back and forth to rehab after my stint with Father Oak. I got over my disability, but Mike can’t seem to shake his…me. The poor bastard says he loves me but I don’t want his kind of love. Too honest. Too real. Too much potential hurt involved. His hurt, not mine. I stopped feeling a long time ago.
Besides, I should have known better. He goes against rule number one: Never date, or sleep with a non-drinker.
I made that mistake in the beginning when I was emotional, drugged-up and happy to see the little sleeve-wiper. He’s been trying to get back to the date-state ever since we broke up a few months ago. But I won’t let that happen again. Not in this lifetime. He goes against rule number two: Never date a guy who wants to change you.
We continue to walk up to the prison in silence.
I figure he must be working on his milk-habit-guilt this morning or I’d be hearing all the crap about what lung cancer looks like and how they had to cut out half of some relative’s jawbone before he or she died a pitiful death at forty-five.
“What’s all that?” Mike asks about a large group of mostly women sitting on folding chairs under a white canopy.
“I guess you’ve never been to a prison before.”
“Never had the need.”
“Oh, that’s right, you come from Minnesota. There are no prisons in Minnesota.”
“We’ve got our share of gangsters and outlaws.”
“Gangsters and outlaws? You’ve been watching far too many James Cagney movies. Well, Jimmy, those are the dolls, the dames who got left behind. It must be visiting day.”
“Look how they’re dressed,” he says, gawking now as we walk past the group. “And the perfume.” He waves his hand back and forth in front of his face trying to get rid of the smell. There must be close to a hundred women, mostly black and Latino, a few children and maybe ten or fifteen men waiting patiently under the white canopy. Night-club-wear on most of the women: bright colors, sequins, rhinestones, cleavage and silver three-inch heels.
“Gotta keep reminding your man what he’s missing. It’s all part of the game. I remember waiting outside the jail for my dad and watching the women line up, waiting to get in. Of course, they weren’t quite as colorful back then, but it’s the same gig.”
When we get to the guardhouse, Mike is told that we have to enter through the Visitors Center, a tan, brick one-story building at the end of the fence. I take in the last drag of my cigarette and drop it on the ground. Because I haven’t smoked in so long I get a reassuring buzz. Moaning with delight while I step on the butt, I tell Mike, “Heaven in just two little inches.”
He mumbles some nasty comment. I don’t ask him to repeat it because I’m not in the mood for some insane milk argument. I’ve got my own argument going on. Like, why in hell am I doing this?
It must be time to let everyone in because the women get up from their chairs and start to line up behind me. I enter on the girls’ side and Mike on the boys’.
Inside the building the walls are lined with pressed wood paneling, like they’re trying to make the room cozy or something. I tell one of the female guards what I’m here for and another guard proceeds to check me with a metal-detector wand while yet another guard digs through my purse. An alarm goes off and shatters my brain but the butch-prison-guard who’s wanding me doesn’t flinch. The black mamma in the gold lamé gown waiting next to me gets impatient and puts her hand on her hip and rolls her eyes. The guard, without saying a word, starts frisking me and gropes at my breasts like some sex-starved teenage boy in heat.
“It’s my bra,” I tell her. “I wear an underwire.”
No reaction.
The magic wand travels down my body to my feet and back up between my legs. The alarm stops. The gold lamé lets out a sigh and adjusts her own bra. “Don’t you know better than to come in here wearing one of them things? They got themselves a real phobia about metal. Go get yourself a party dress like I got. Your man’s gonna love you in one of these and there ain’t no metal pushin’ you up. It’s just all natural lusciousness.” She slides her hands around her half exposed breasts and down the sides of her hourglass body, her perfume growing more intense as she moves.
“I bet he would,” I answer smiling with her, amazed at the amount of pride she seems to take in the way she looks at ten in the morning—like a backup singer in a Vegas lounge act. The line of incoming women behind her wraps around the Center and, except for a few older, more motherly types, they’re all dressed for the same show.
I must be an enigma to these dolls. I’m in black slacks and a white shirt. My short, unstyled brown hair is combed back off my face and I’m wearing almost no makeup, which means I have no eyes. Without eye makeup, I look about as feminine as a white dinner plate. The only thing girly about me are my bright red earrings—a calculated rebellion.
Two of the guards escort us into a tiny room and hand us special Movie Crew badges to wear while we’re inside the prison. A male guard named Captain Bob—dark hair, overweight, late forties, with a mole just under his left eye—leads us down a long hallway. The guards wear a two-toned green uniform, grass green slacks and a light green shirt; traditional guard.
We walk with the Captain following a yellow line down the middle of the floor. He tells us that there are three sets of iron gates in this tunnel we need to go through before we reach our destination. I take a deep breath. We’re inside a long corridor: clean gray walls, frosted windows on either side, brown cement floor that’s been waxed and polished to a high gloss. All the while we walk, the voices coming from somewhere inside the prison get louder and louder. The yellow line makes me think of Dorothy in some psycho trip to Oz. I can’t help humming the tune in my head. Somehow, the song helps balance me. Calm me. Perhaps if I click my red earrings together I can fly away home. The thought makes me smile. Makes me think of my apartment. My bed. Wish I were in it right now.
I concentrate on the yellow line and the lyrics.
Mike walks beside me, touching my hand and arm with his fingers, assuring me, consoling me, like a parent guiding his kid down a dark alley. I move toward his touch, desperate for any shred of strength I can find.
Mike and a few key people from the movie’s production office organized everything with the warden and his assistant last week, while I was busy down on Maxwell Street convincing a couple of hookers and a good-looking drug dealer/pimp named Flukey Brown (who has a passion for pink) that they ought to be in movies. We needed to shoot a few street scenes. I like to cast the ‘real thing’ whenever possible. It makes for a better background; besides, the directors seem to like it.
I wish I had stayed working on Maxwell Street. I felt secure with Flukey and his hookers. At least I knew who I was dealing with. This place is something altogether different.
We enter our last set of gates, waiting for the first to slide open, walking through, then waiting again for it to slide shut behind us. As soon as the first gate locks down with a nerve-shattering clunk, the second gate starts its slide to let us through. “You’re now behind the wall,” Captain Bob says.
Now there’s a thought. Securely locked inside with murderers and rapists—behind the wall.
I go for a cigarette. Mike stops me, shaking his head a little, squeezing his face up in a don’t-do-it-now look, touching my hand. I let the cigarette fall out of my hand and back into my purse.
A middle-aged, round, black man in tight green polyester walks up to us. The Wizard, no doubt. Next to him is a smiling, effervescent-looking woman in her mid-forties maybe, with permed brown hair and sensible shoes. She’s wearing a dark blue ultra conservative business suit but I know she’s pink satin underneath, just like Glinda, the good witch.
“That’s the warden, Curtis Evans,” Mike whispers. “And Vivian, the entertainment director.”
“Who, in their right mind—?” I start to say but never get to finish my question. Vivian answers my thought.
“We’re so happy to have you here. The men are really looking forward to making this movie. It means a lot to them. Especially the men with families. They don’t get to see them much, you know…I mean the families don’t get to see the men. This way, some of the men with good behavior can both learn a new skill, such as movie making, and their families will get a good look at them. It’s great for morale. You know?”
I shake her hand but I don’t know what to say. She’s just too damn positive. Perfect casting.
Mike sticks out his hand as he walks towards the warden, a short, stern-looking man with bifocals he keeps down on his nose and peers at us over the top. Personally, I get the impression that he’s not too happy with our enthusiasm for entertainment. To him, life must be serious business, not to be taken for granted in a place like this.
“Hi, we met last week. I’m Mike Holtzer and this is Carly Rockett,” Mike says turning his fervor off for a moment and looking as intense as the warden. I follow along, shaking the warden’s hand, only I don’t have to change mood gears; I’m already riding in overdrive.
“Nice to meet you. I hope you’re feeling better today, Ms. Rockett. My wife has some pretty bad days, herself,” the warden says while shaking my hand.
I want to kill Mike but all I can do is smile. “Yes, I’m much better today, thank you.”
“It’s just as well. We were pretty busy around here yesterday. Richard Speck’s parole hearing. The reporters like to blow hype and get everybody worked up, especially the families. My heart goes out to those people, but Richard’s not going anywhere. Doesn’t even show up for his own parole hearings anymore. Wouldn’t ask for a parole, but some media up-and-coming got it into her head to use Speck to better her career and once again the families end up the victims. Speck’s our resident celebrity and the reporters won’t let him go, but that was yesterday’s news. We’re back to normal today.”
It felt strange, almost familiar, to hear Speck referred to by his first name and then to be called a celebrity, as if he and Arnold Schwarzenegger shared the same status.
“Anybody mind if I smoke?” I ask while I light up.
“No, that’s fine,” the warden says. “There are only a few non-smoking areas and we keep it posted.”
“Great, that’s great cause I intend to do a lot of smoking.”
“She’s trying to quit,” Mike says with understanding sympathy in his voice. The guy never gives up.
Vivian leans over and whispers, “My mother used to lie in bed with a hot water bottle on her stomach for five days, poor dear, but I found that if you kneel down and keep your bottom in the air and your forehead on the floor for five minutes all your cramps just disappear. Whoosh, they’re gone. I’ll show you later in my office.” She gives me a reassuring shoulder squeeze as if she’s now going to take over the role of big sister.
I want to scream.
Of all the excuses Mike could have used yesterday, why did he have to pick that one? What’s wrong with the flu? Couldn’t I just have had the goddamn flu? Why do men like to use the old “she’s-on-the-rag” excuse? As if it’s the end-all of female excuses. What shit!
“Everything’s all set up for you in the theater. It’s just down the tunnel and out through the courtyard to another building,” the warden says as we continue on down the yellow brick road toward an open doorway.
Once outside in the courtyard, we walk in a tight group along a cement path. The grounds look like an extremely large backyard, with a mowed lawn and a few trees for afternoon shade. Only there are no kids playing on a swing-set or in a sandbox, laughing. Instead, the inmates scream obscenities at us out the windows of the surrounding buildings. Most of the voices come from a massive tan building, three or four stories high with plenty of windows. Vivian seems oblivious to the ranting. I try not to focus, but “What size is your cunt, bitch?” comes across loud and clear along with “White boy, let me have that pretty ass.”
Mike rakes his hair and adjusts his gym bag on his shoulder, pulling it in to align with his hip. One of his many nervous gestures. The gym bag contains a Polaroid, a few packs of instant film and some blue stat sheets to sign up the inmates for the movie (blue sheets for boys and pink for girls—Mike’s idea of an efficient filing system). A few other crew members should be here already but so far we haven’t run into anybody.
We keep walking. Can’t think about where I am or what would happen if any of these bad boys got loose. Have to concentrate on something good, but the voices keep pumping up reality. Their screams piercing the air, making me feel like I’m all tangled up in barbed wire. After a while, I can’t distinguish any individual words. They all blend together in some venomous din. As if the screams have a personality of their own, an evil personality that resonates from the air. A hot September air that wraps itself around you and pushes at your soul making you hate being human, hate being trapped, so you scream out your rage using your most vile phrases attempting to shock whoever might be listening to your world. Your hell.
Five
The room we finally end up in is just off the stage in the theater—an honest-to-god building dedicated to entertainment. What a concept. It’s a vast expanse of high ceilings, seating for about one hundred (orange-cushioned chairs, bolted to the concrete) but room for several hundred more, a full-size stage (with matching orange drapes) and windows all around, the bars on the outside—not to distract from the ambiance. There’s a bank of offices over the front doorway with windows that look down on the main floor. Wonder what goes on in there?
A group of about seventy-five inmates waits in the seats along with a couple guards. Everyone laughing. Talking. Staring up at the stage. Anticipation on their faces, as if some event were about to begin. Maybe a few of the inmates will get up and do a little soft-shoe…maybe not. A Johnny Cash concert, perhaps: lights get dim, a figure walks out on stage, a bright spotlight catches the man in black as he begins a rousing chorus of Folsom Prison Blues. Why not? With somebody like Vivian around, he probably already made an appearance.
I can hear Mike work the room. “First, I want to say thanks for showing up here today. This is great—great. I suppose Vivian told you a little about what we’re doing.”
A voice yells out, “We wanna see Schwarzenegger. When’s he gonna be here?”
“In a few days. We have to get everything ready first.”
Another voice, “We get to see him up close?”
“Might, if you’re in his scene.”
“We all gonna be in his scene?”
“Can’t promise that, but he’s cool. Never know what might happen. Likes to meet everybody. Pretty friendly.”
Another voice, “We gonna get paid?”
“Yeah. You’ll get thirty-five dollars a day, plus a carton of cigarettes. We’ll probably need all you guys, but not every day. If you’re used in a scen
e and they re-shoot, we’ll call you back to the set. If we only work you for a couple hours, you’ll still get the thirty-five plus cigarettes. Pretty good deal. Right?” The inmates call out their agreement. Mike continues. “Okay. So what we need you to do is go into—”
His voice fades as the rumble of the men getting ready to come into our room drown him out. Vivian and I are seated at a metal table inside a small, beige room. If it wasn’t for the window, I’d be hyper-ventilating. Tight. Too tight.
Mike and four inmates enter with Captain Bob. The Captain tells them to line up against the far wall just on the other side of our table. One of them is a white man. I’m afraid to look. What if he’s Speck? Can’t handle this. Not now. Not in here. I’m thinking I should have never agreed. I can’t breathe.
“Just relax,” Vivian whispers. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
I throw her a look, like ‘what are you talking about?’
Am I that obvious?
Have to screw up the courage. Have to look.
I glance up.
One of them has dark blond hair. Speck has dark blond hair. I look away and try to light up a cigarette. Vivian stops me with that Nancy Reagan swinging finger and points to a no smoking sign. I put the cigarette down and take a better look.
Speck isn’t among them.
“You guys have any questions?” I ask, letting the air out of my lungs.